Can we do a better job teaching entrepreneurship in Canada?

Earlier this year, EY’s G20 Entrepreneurship Barometer scored Canada below the average among G20 countries for entrepreneurial education and informal education. The study’s authors specifically noted that “too few education and training-related efforts focus specifically on the needs of entrepreneurs.”

This should be cause for concern. Entrepreneurs are a critical, if often overlooked, engine of the Canadian economy. Small businesses represent 98% of all companies in Canada, accounting for approximately 30% of gross domestic product and providing nearly 48% of private sector employment, Industry Canada statistics show.

It seems worth asking: Can we do a better job teaching entrepreneurship in Canada?

Last month, I launched The Next Big Thing, a charitable foundation to identify Canada’s brightest young entrepreneurs. Ten innovators aged 18 to 23 are being selected now for a six-month program in Vancouver. All learning will be hands-on, with entrepreneurs using HootSuite’s headquarters as a home base to work on their individual business plans, connect with mentors and collaborate with partners including the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Our goals are simple if unconventional: Get tomorrow’s most promising entrepreneurs out of the classroom and into the business world. Remove the usual obstacles — grades, degrees and work experience. Reward ingenuity and accelerate the pace at which a good idea becomes a business reality.

This model is born of my own experiences or, more accurately, the experiences I wish I had had as a young Canadian entrepreneur. I’d like to share my story not because I think the obstacles I faced were profound, but because, sadly, they were not unique.

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In high school, I was an uninspired student. I could pour my energies into passion projects, but the day-to-day grind of classroom learning wasn’t experiential enough. A lot of the innovators I admire fell into the same boat: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were all high school or college dropouts. With some savings and a loan from my parents, I started my first business at 16: a paintball supply company. While my classmates were enjoying summer vacation, I was getting a hands-on lesson in marketing and logistics.

As graduation approached, I pored over lists of bursaries and scholarships and found lots of opportunities for people interested in sports, music and drama, but really nothing for people interested in entrepreneurship. As a compromise, I studied business at the University of Victoria. I sat through plenty of excellent classes on economics, but it was all theory, with little nuts and bolts on how to get an idea off the ground. I dropped out at the end of my third year.

First, I turned my energies to starting a pizza restaurant, funded with a credit card with a $20,000 line of credit. When the tech boom looked unstoppable, I sold the restaurant and moved to Vancouver, where I taught myself to code and founded a web development agency called Invoke Media.

The odds were daunting. There were few places I could turn to unravel the mysteries of financing, commercialization and scaling. The network of mentors, incubators and investors so critical to startup success just wasn’t there. Then the 2000 tech bust hit and prospects looked bleak.

I hung in there though and eventually founded HootSuite, which now employs nearly 400 people and helps 237 of the Fortune 500 companies manage their social media.

But early on there were so many times when I felt I was stumbling in the dark. A little mentorship and guidance could have radically accelerated the process and improved my odds of success. The reality is, even with lots of heart and perseverance and hustle, I still had to get pretty lucky to be where I am now.

The Next Big Thing aims to begin to change that dynamic. Entrepreneurship in Canada needs to be taught, but the classroom isn’t necessarily the best place to do so. The young entrepreneurs in our program will be evaluated and selected on the strength of their ideas and ambition of their vision, not on their transcripts. They’ll be connected with mentors, including Dragons’ Den-ers and Ted Talk-ers, who understand the challenges that lie ahead and how to best navigate them. They’ll also be supported with grants so they can focus their time and effort on turning their ideas into viable businesses.

The goal is to provide a balance of support and freedom that could make the difference for innovators at the start of their careers. Thomas Edison, dismissed as dumb and scatterbrained in school, may have said it best more than a century ago: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Part of promoting entrepreneurship in Canada means finding ways to make sure young people don’t give up on great ideas too soon. I hope this is a small step in that direction.